Egypt’s new interim government is not a leftist coalition

A historian of the Middle East from Stanford
University discusses Egypt’s new interim government and the labour movement.

Giuseppe Acconcia:
Professor Beinin, we are told that the Muslim Brothers have been abandoned by
the armed forces to foster a government more engaged in the defense of social
justice, as requested by millions of protesters, is this true?

Joel Beinin: To be sure the army is
aware that with this economic crisis, with rising prices and the fall in the
import of wheat, the Egyptian people’s social rights have to be addressed. I would
not say that the new government looks likely to follow this path. The prime
minister Hazim Beblawi is a man of the centre and his government arises out of
an agreement between the youth movements, the liberal party al-Dostour, led by
Mohammed el-Baradei, and the Nasserists, supporting Hamdin Sabbahi: it is not a
leftist coalition.

GA: In terms of
political direction, what does the Minister of Manpower, Kamal Abu Eita,
president of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions, lend the
government?

JB: Eita is a Nasserist, not a socialist. It is enough to
read his first commentary after the offer: “Workers should become the heroes of
production”. According to the Nasserists, strikes should never take place: the
national economy must ameliorate to the point that all salaried workers can
live properly. For this reason, Eita has been criticized by the left, for
instance by Fatma Ramada, representative of the Independent Syndicates’ board, who
harshly opposed his appointment.

GA: Have the Muslim Brothers lost their support among the Egyptian
workers?

JB: They never had any such support. The workers in the
industrial sectors showed their clear opposition towards the Brotherhood; for
instance, by rejecting the Constitution in the Nile Delta region and Cairo, the
biggest industrial areas of the country.

GA: During this year, did the many leftist parties that supported the
rebel campaign swell their ranks before the 3 July
military coup?

JB: The true leftist
parties, such as the Revolutionary Socialist party, do not have a significant
constituency. They are not able to mobilize the workers. They had some
political space before and after Mubarak: but the economic crisis alienated their
support in the workers movement. The Tamarrod (rebels) always described itself
as a big coalition. Among the signatures collected, a fifth come from the left.
But this component is rather lost in nationalist discourses. The campaign which
led to Morsi’s fall speaks to and for the nation, without expressing the
demands of any one class.

GA: This secular change has been helped by the Nasserist component
within the army?

JB: The true Nasserists were eliminated within the top posts
of command inside the military, years ago. In the political arena, the army has
always fought against both Nasserists and Islamists, which explains why Marshal
Hussein Tantawi needed a week to admit that Morsi won the elections against Ahmed
Shafiq last year.

GA: Why has the law on independent syndicates, approved after the
revolts, never been enforced?

JB: At the last syndicate elections in 2006, the Muslim
Brothers and leftist movements did not participate, because the activists of
those groups had already been identified, removed or rounded up and put under
arrest by state security. The military junta did not permit the governments,
after 2011, to apply a law that could revitalize the Egyptian trade union movements.

The parliament elected
in 2012 had been discussing the new syndicate law, and three different versions
were proposed. However, the process was abruptly terminated by the Parliament’s
dissolution. Last August 2011, members of the Brotherhood, remnants of the old
regime (feloul) and leftist independents entered the Central Committee of the
Egyptian syndicate’s federation. At that stage, the Islamists began to work
with the feloul. Last year, the
syndicate elections were postponed and the same will happen again this year. In
the meantime, the Muslim Brothers and the National Democratic Party’s former
members still control the trade unions.

GA: Is it correct that the Mahalla al-Kubra’s workers were active in these
latest revolts?

JB: At the moment, nobody knows who represents whom. The
workers in Mahalla are a force that could lead the movement, but up till now
none of the political parties have been able to organize it. The real socialist
parties are very far from power; while social-democrats, already active in the
previous regime, have been co-opted within the new government. This means they
have become party to a nationalist ideology that for years has categorically
rebuffed the workers’ requests.

About the authors

Giuseppe
Acconcia is an award-winning journalist and researcher focusing on the Middle
East; researcher at the University of Padova, visiting scholar at the University
of California (UCLA), teaching assistant at Bocconi, and a lecturer at the Cattolica University
in Milan (Aseri). His research interests focus on youth and social movements,
Iranian domestic politics, and the state and transformation in the Middle East. He is
the author of The Great Iran (Exorma, 2016), Egypt. Military Democracy (Exorma,
2014) and The Egyptian Spring (Infinito, 2012). He publishes in Il Mulino, The
International Spectator, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Sada) and
Palgrave.

Joel Beinin, Professor of History of the Middle
East at Stanford University (California) and expert on syndicates and worker
movements in the region talks about the current political developments in
Egypt.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence.
If you have any queries about republishing please contact us.
Please check individual images for licensing details.

World Forum for Democracy 2017

This year, the theme is ‘populism’. Is the problem fake news or fake democracy? What media, what political parties, what politicians do we need to re-connect with citizens and make informed choices in 21st century democracy?

Civil Society Futures is a national conversation about how English civil society can flourish in a fast changing world.Come and add your voice»

Full coverage of the non-hierarchical conference held in Barcelona on 18-22 June 2017.